More. I’m not saying that none of the nominees have records that are suspect, although the Blade conflates cases they accepted as lawyers and positions they took as elected legislators with judicial opinions. But much of the criticism is just partisan bloviating. This is especially evident with two of the five judges about whom the Blade, following the lead of LGBT activist groups, is aghast:

[David James] Porter leads the Lawyers Chapter of the Pittsburgh Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that argues for strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. … Also of concern to LGBT groups is Porter’s opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

[Thomas Alvin] Farr has faced criticism from LGBT groups because of the larger progressive coalition’s concern over his defense of policies seen to target minority groups, such as a North Carolina gerrymandering law seen to block black voters from being heard in the political process.

I could make reasoned arguments against the ACA and race-specific congressional districts gerrymandered with surgical precision, and in favor of photo IDs at polls as a common-sense step to deter fraud, but that’s not the point. If you’re not lock, stock and barrel behind the progressive agenda, then you’re opposed by LGBT activists groups and thus you’re “anti-LGBT.”

Still more. A comment posted on the Blade site by mginsd says:

There are many gay members of the Federalist Society – I’m one of them – and not all gays are or were thrilled by the self-described “Wise Latina’s” record on and before her appointment to SCOTUS. Moreover, the stale, quarter-century old claims against Farr re: voter intimidation are just that; he was never found responsible for anything other than annoying a lawyer in a Democrat-led DOJ. And, as to his efforts “to undermine unionization efforts,” gee, guess what: employers need representation, too, and the sanctity of Big Labor is not a matter of gay rights, however expansively they are defined.

Shouldn’t Stephen be glad that people are exercising their democratic rights? After all, Kennedy was nominated — in large part — because of the response to the first two nominees. If history repeats itself, then the first two nominees (per seat) that Trump puts forward are probably worth objecting to….

“Mulvaney’s portrayal of punishing people over their marriage laws is either intentionally deceptive or unintentionally ignorant. It’s true that the Obama administration responded to homophobic laws across Africa by threatening to withhold aid to countries that enforced them, but that policy was never about laws not recognizing the right for same-sex couples to marry. It was a response to laws on the books in several dozen African countries that criminalize homosexuality itself — putting people in jail just because they were gay, or even just because they were suspected of being gay.”

I would be a little more sympathetic to the mewling from thinkprogress.org if they and their fellow liberal toads had deigned to concede this distinction the innumerable times US politicians took positions that were against gay marriage but not homosexuality.

I do not for one minute trust the author’s sincerity. ThinkProgess can prove me wrong and atone for the sins of their fellows by, on their own and without any assistance from me, beginning and succeeding in their crusade to keep US money out of countries that criminalize homosexuality. I’ll be cheering them every step of the way.

“This friction was also evident when Kenyan lawmakers warned President Obama against speaking about LGBTQ rights when he traveled to the country in 2015. At a joint press conference with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Obama nevertheless took a principled stance. “When you start treating people differently not because of any harm they are doing to anybody, but because they are different, that’s the path whereby freedoms begin to erode,” he said. “And bad things happen.””

This is totally meant as a cheap shot, but I wish when President Trump had gone to his birth country and done a joint press conference he’d had half the backbone President Obama did.

The point where you can blame white European colonialism for African homophobia is long gone. The European nations that once colonized Africa are now some of the most pro-gay countries in the world. Banning homosexuality is an act of war. Obama is a sellout, a panderer, a coward, and a backstabber. If he was any kind of ally, he would never have signed a deal with Iran.

Log Cabin Republicans and gay Republicans in general deserve 100% of the credit for ending DADT. We were the only gays not vilifying the military and everything about it.

Sessions’ announcement of a “Religious Liberty Task Force” at a “Religious Liberty Summit” follows President Trump’s religious liberty executive order of May. It also follows the Department of Health and Human Services’ announcement in January of a new “Conscience and Religious Freedom Division” to be housed within the agency’s Office for Civil Rights.

The “Religious Liberty Task Force”—which summons up images of a pirate ship filled with the staffs of the ADF, Liberty Counsel, and Family Research Council, sallying forth and liberating prejudiced bakers everywhere—will apparently ensure that everything Sessions laid out in his “religious liberty” memo of last October is pursued to the letter. That memo outlined how multiple government agencies should seek to uphold “religious liberty” even if it conflicts with existing anti-discrimination policies.”

Now, excuse me while I find a less contrived and deceptive source for this information.

—

Religion is an incidental target. It is simply a voice, and a disorganized one at that, that opposes the social agenda of the left, but that is precisely the reason it is being targeted. It is viewed as no better and no worse than any of the other enemies standing in the way, and in such a way as to be worthless. That is more than a small problem.

Attorney General Sessions has a grasp of this bigger picture–and how it relates to the very similar threat by President Trump to discredit any entity perceived not to be loyal to him. I am encouraged every time I read about a speech in which he says, “I’m here, I’m not going away, and I’m going to get it done!”

Another thought occurs to me. Before this was the Attorney General’s focus on illegal immigration (which also saw a steely backbone speech). It is quite possible the Attorney General is in part ingratiating himself one by one to the most loyal factions of President Trump’s base (which is not to say the most passionate) in order to exert some kind of foundation against a president who is mercurial and expresses little confidence in him. I have absolutely no doubt he believes everything he says, but success requires certain tactics. Why would he bother to give speeches to special interest groups?

(“Why would he bother to give speeches to special interest groups?” There’s my naivete showing.)

“After Sessions gave his conference speech, he ceded the floor to Catholic Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, the former head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, whose previous advocacy work includes lobbying against same-sex marriage and against anti-discrimination policies for LGBTQ workers.

Kurtz spoke about the necessity of partnerships between religious institutions and the government, and alluded to the importance of defending, for example, state-funded adoption agencies that turn away prospective LGBTQ parents on religious grounds. “There are some who claim that faith-based organizations must give up our convictions when we partner with the government to provide much-needed social services,” Kurtz said. “[But] … faith-based organizations are some of the most trusted groups within our society and excluding them makes no sense in a holistic society like ours.”

Sessions’s vision of religious liberty as, fundamentally, active and interventionist government support of religious identity seems to be in line with his wider political philosophy. Last month, for example, Sessions used the Bible verse Romans 13 to justify separating migrant families at the US-Mexico border. He used it on the grounds that the verse — part of a letter written by St. Paul urging an early Christian Roman community not to participate in a political uprising — legitimized absolute submission to government authority.

(Sessions’s own religious tradition, the United Methodist Church, recently formally censured him, calling for an ecclesiastical trial against him for, among other charges, inaccurately publicly representing the Christian faith.)

The American Civil Liberties Union vociferously condemned the task force, tweeting that the Department of Justice “has no business licensing discrimination against LGBT people, women, and religious minorities.”

Me, too. I’d go even further than that. After what racist sexist anti-semitic homophobic gentile blasphemers and perverts have done to gay people and Jews, I’d ban them altogether, never mind adoption agencies.

All crimes against homosexuality are capital crimes. No exceptions. Letting heterosexuals anywhere near children is a form of abuse. Filling their heads with boneheaded bigoted lies defaming Judaism, Israel, and the Jewish God is also a form of abuse.

Big Labor: where whoever’s not on the take from the CCCP is on the take from the Cosa Nostra.

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IGF CultureWatch is a blog that originated with the Independent Gay Forum, a group of writers and activists who focused on advancing gay and lesbian legal equality and social inclusion beyond ideological rigidity and leftwing orthodoxy. more